Doctors for better state hospitals

Hyderabad: Private doctors are demanding that public hospitals must be strengthened and better equipped to deal with terminally ill patients so that private hospitals do not have to face unruly relatives.

Government doctors state that unruly relatives will be the same even in government hospitals and there is no guarantee that they will not cause damage.

Dr Mohammed Iqbal Javed, a senior Indian Medical Association (IMA) member, said, “These incidents can be prevented in private hospitals only if the culprits are punished.”

He said the government must better equip public hospitals  so that they can handle critical cases. "One of the major reasons for such attacks on the private sector is the failure of the public health system to provide proper emergency care. When the relatives pay huge sums of money for medical costs they panic and often attack the staff due to anger.”

Government doctors state that most of the terminally ill patients are sent from private hospitals to government hospitals for treatment.

Dr P. Naik, a senior professor and anaesthetist, said, “We have experience in care of terminally ill patie-nts. The only difference is that they are not paying huge sums of money in the hospital. Hence, the anger is targeted towards the doctors. Unruly relatives are a challenge for both government and private doctors. There is no difference in their behaviour.”

The senior doctors of IMA, who met senior police officials, urged that the attackers of Global Hospital have to be booked and punished. They demanded that Act 11 must be imposed on them which entail jail and also double the compensation of the damaged property.